The present invention relates to guards for covering coupling joints that connect rotating shafts on machinery.
Guards are often used to cover coupling joints in order to prevent accidental contact with fast rotating coupling joints, such as for covering coupling joints connecting motors to machinery for power transmissions. Further, many standards require guards, such as standards by OSHA, ASME and ANSI organizations. However, guards must not only prevent accidental contact, they also must be quickly removable to allow efficient repair. Also, guards must preferably be low cost for competitive reasons. Another problem is that complex guards and/or difficult-to-install guards are soon removed from (or left off from) machinery because maintenance personnel and workers get tired of trying to work around them. One practical reason that guards become complex or expensive is because of the tendency to custom manufacture guards for each application, due to the variations and special circumstances encountered at each installation. At the same time, it is difficult to make a guard flexible enough to satisfy a variety of different physical environments, yet that is cost competitive, meets industry safety standards, and that can accommodate most variations seen at a job site.